But I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever)
Down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb
That blooms but one day a year by the riverside – I’d bring it here:
Apply it gently
To the love you’ve lent me

While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
And the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze
And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly, gone treacly
Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat
—frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath

Press on me: we are restless things
Webs of seaweed are swaddling
You call upon the dusk
Of the musk of a squid
Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, “THE WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND” (excerpt)

On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round—
O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned;
Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing
Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?

Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;
Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow
Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.